Polymaths, and niches
Before I joined my current Fediverse home instance—Polymaths.social—I didn’t even know what a “polymath” is. I guess I kinda am one, given how many loose hobbies and skills I have. Amin agrees! But since my impostor syndrome does not allow me to fully accept this title, I’ll use the word “polymath” to mean “a person with many interests”.
Anyway; as a polymath, the thing I always struggled with was defining niches for what I do when I share my work with others. Let’s take YouTube, for example. A typical YouTuber tends to stick to what they do well on their channel and rarely leave the niche they’ve acquired. Marquez Brownlee started with tech, got famous with tech, so the main content of MKBHD is still tech. It would be “weird” or “unusual” to publish a car video on this channel—unless it’s a car jam-packed with tech—hence the existence of the Autofocus channel. That’s two niches for two particular interests of Marquez and his team. A lot of YouTubers don’t even have multiple niches and stick to one thing.
Well, this “sticking to one thing” never really worked for me. I wanted to make YouTube videos about Germany in Russian, but I also wanted to make videos about Russia in English, and I also wanted to shoot documentaries and dub them into multiple languages, and I also want to do coding streams, but I also want to do coding courses, but I haven’t decided in which languages and for what audience… And the reason I haven’t yet started with many of those ventures is because I never figured out how to split the content between the potential audiences, and I didn’t want to create yet another YouTube channel1.
Same with the Fediverse. When I started, I’ve created my profile on Fosstodon, because I loved FOSS and I could chat with like-minded people about it, in English. Okay, but what to do with Russians that I know from Twitter and who’ve migrated to the Fediverse? I guess I need a Russian-speaking account for them2. But what about Germany? Where can I be annoyed about Deutsche Bahn? Well, one more account for this. I’m learning French, though, and some practice (at least in text form) with the French-speaking side of the Fediverse would be nice, too… Oh no, I once again have to many accounts, and my head explodes from having to toggle between them!
I guess the worst thing for me was the absence of a role model, as well as the absence of the overall name for the thing that I am. But, as it turns out, these role models were in front of me this whole time. The best example for me would be Ilya Birman, a graphics, transport map, and user interface designer. Apart from this, he’s also a traveller, a techno DJ, a web developer, a fan of billiards and snooker, and an enjoyer of coffee, especially flat white. And for everything that he does, he only has one YouTube channel and one personal blog. I’ve been following Ilya for quite some time, but I never realized that he is the proof that the approach to social media, that I thought wouldn’t work, works! It doesn’t matter if it’s a rant about e-mail, a snippet of a snooker game, a design tutorial, or an old show reel; all of this gets posted in one place, making it way easier to find stuff and, more importantly, making it easier to understand what kind of person he is.
Another person I adore for this would be Atomic Shrimp. Like many of his fans, I found his channel through a scam baiting video, but I stayed for, well, everything else. Cooking, foraging, technology, a fair share of scam awareness and scam baiting, and just videos about life, I guess. As with Ilya, Mike also only has his one YouTube channel, where he uploads everything he feels like making a video about, and honestly, it’s very refreshing to see amongst all other channels trying hard to stay in their niche.
As for the name, there is a name for this, or at least there’s a name I use to refer to these sorts of people: Polymaths! It’s not “weird” or “out of place” to have multiple interests and multiple skills, it’s totally fine to want to share them with the world, and no-one should be afraid of putting stuff on the “wrong” feed. There are no wrong feeds or wrong channels. Your channel should be about you. As simple as that.